Chances for CS or Engineering Universities[High School Sophomore Panicking]

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi, I am currently a sophomore in high school, and I am really worried about my future. I really want to do either Computer Science or some sort of engineering field in college.
Here are my current stats:

Freshman Year:

Honors Algebra 2 ~ S1: A S2: B+
Honors Spanish 2 ~ S1: B+ S2: B+
Honors Graphic Production ~ S1: A S2: A
Computer Science ~ S1: A S2: A
Honors Physics ~ S1: A S2: A
Honors English ~ S1: A S2: A

Sophomore Year:

Honors Math Analysis ~ S1: B+ S2: ?
Honors Spanish 3 ~ S1: B S2: ?
Honors English ~ S1: A S2: ?
AP Biology ~ S1: B+ S2: ?
AP Environmental Science ~ S1: A S2: ?
AP Computer Science ~ S1: A S2: ?

I am looking at about a 3.75 cumulative GPA by the end of this year, here are my classes that I will take Junior and Senior year.

Junior Year:
AP Calculus A
AP Statistics
AP Psychology
AP English Language
AP US History
Advanced Projects in Java

Senior Year
AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism
AP Physics C: Mechanics
AP Chemistry
AP English Literature
AP Calculus BC
Global Health (Humanities Class)

My extra-curricular/awards:
Vex Robotics

  • Washington State Champion along with many other awards (I put in most of my freetime into this)
  • Went 8-2 at Robotics Worlds
  • Captain

TSA Washington State

  • 3rd Place Engineering Design
  • 2nd Place Robotics
  • Biomedical Engineering Finalist
  • Architectural Design Finalist
  • Children’s Story Finalist

FBLA Washington State

  • 4th Place E-Buisiness

Duke Summer College

  • Microbiology

Digipen Summer Classes

  • Learned Java

Key Club

  • Over 100 hours of Volunteer Work

Teaching Kids STEM

  • Volunteer for 70 hours per summer teaching kids about STEM Field

Piano

  • Lead pianist for my school’s orchestra
  • Learned at most competitive school in state

Track and Field

Things I plan on starting in my Junior Year:
Model UN
HOSA
Chess Club
CRSEF - WASEF
Imagine Tommorrow
Concur Mobile App Internship
Creating a company with some friends centering a cloud storage app

I plan on raising my GPA by a large amount in Junior and Senior year, as I sort of directed too much of my attention to other things this year, and was wondering if any of you could give me suggestions as to what colleges I should attempt to apply to.
Here are the ones I am interested in:

Specific Majors

Computer Science:
University of Washington
UC Berkeley
UCSD
Purdue

Engineering:
Carnegie Mellon (Engineering or Computer Science)
NYU

General
UCLA
UC Davis
Duke (huge reach)

2

You can make it into every school k

3

I think that you need to work hard to get your math scores up. Math is the basis for a lot of future work in STEM, including CS and engineering. Also, what you are going to learn next year in math depends a lot on what you learned last year and the year before. Thus a very strong foundation in math is very important for CS, engineering, math, and a few other degrees. You might want to do some work over the summer to solidify your understanding of the math that you already took.

The next most important thing to do is to be more realistic regarding which universities you are focusing on. There are a LOT of very good universities which have very strong programs in CS and engineering. Also, “prestige” doesn’t matter at all in CS and engineering – employers and coworkers are going to care about what you are capable of doing, period.

I would do fewer APs. You are pushing yourself too hard, and your grades or your health can be at risk if you overdo it.

Only do ECs if you actually want to. I think that the number of ECs that you are planning in combination with the number of APs that you are taking are way too much. You already have too many B’s to seriously consider Harvard or Stanford, and you don’t need to push yourself to the breaking point to get into other very good “realistic” schools. Frankly, from my perspective, any university that expects a student to do as many APs and ECs as you are planning is a university that I would avoid.

4

@DadTwoGirls Currently, I have a lot of free time to EC’s and was wondering if colleges actually care about them